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Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.
The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.
Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.
That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.
The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.
129. For when God called Adam when he hid himself among the trees, and was ashamed and feared, then the voice of the holy Word entered again into the vital light. And here, when God said, I will put enmity, the seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpent's head, then the holy voice of God went forth out of JEHOVAH, (which would once more move itself in time, and manifest JESUS) in the woman's matrix, in the disappeared heavenly ens, and incorporated itself anew with the holy Word [therein], as into an aim [bound] of an eternal covenant. 30. And this word, which did promise, inhest and incorporate itself into the woman's seed, was that same word which did move itself in Mary's seed, and opened the name JESUS out of the centre of the deepest love in the word, and quickened the disappeared heavenly ens with the introducing of the holy living ens into the disappeared ens of Mary. 31. Understand, the heavenly chaste virginity was again revived in the name of JESUS in the seed of Mary in the motion of the incorporated Word; and this incorporated [or engrafted or in- spoken] Word stood in Eve her seed in the matrix as an aim of a certain Covenant;
2and was all along propagated in Eve's seed, from man to man in the heavenly part, as a sound or incentive of the divine holy light's-fire, wherein the name JESUS was all along propagated in an aim and Covenant, as a glimmering incentive, until the time of the awakening [or manifestation] of it in Mary, where the Covenant was fulfilled, and the doors of the shut chamber were again opened. And this is that holy fire out of which the name JESUS was manifest, which holy fire did burn in the Jewish offerings, which appeased [or atoned] the anger of God, and bruised the head of the monstrous Serpent in man, viz. the monstrous fire-spirit, and will. 32. The bruising of the head is nothing else but to destroy the abomination of the Serpent, to take away its power by a right desire of faith; and by such a strong importunate imagination of faith on the promised Word, to take the same Word and introduce it into the Serpent's ens, and therewith destroy and ruin the devil's theft-fort; and thereby kill the matrix of the whorish desire, and introduce the matrix with its desire into the virgin-like ens, into the aim of the Covenant. 33. In which Covenant the woman and the man [female and male property] shall and must die; and the chaste virgin must be born out of the death in the Word of the Covenant, with both tinctures of peculiar love; and then the Serpent, in its desire in the anger of God, will sting on the heel the virgin-child of the new-birth in the faith.
334. For all this lifetime the virgin-like child is fast bound by the heel with a strong chain unto the monstrous image; and is not able to get quite rid of the Serpent's chain all this lifetime. This chain is the brutal bestial monstrous man, in whom lieth the monster of the whore and Serpent; a figure whereofwe have in the Revelation of John, where the woman stands, with the crown and twelve stars, upon the moon. 35. The moon signifies the bestial man, and the woman signifies the virgin-like matrix in the aim of the Covenant, out of which the virgin-child is born. 36. When as Adam was man and woman, and yet none of them both, the virginity according to the light's tincture in the holy ens was poisoned and infected in him by false desire, for the fiery property of the soul carried [or directed] its lust into the earthliness; and out of that virginity the woman, by the adjoining of all the three Principles, was made; and the woman made herself monstrous by the Serpent, and corrupted the virgin-like matrix, and by her lust did introduce a bestial monstrous serpentine [matrix] thereinto, infected with the devil's will and desire.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
129. For when God called Adam when he hid himself among the trees, and was ashamed and feared, then the voice of the holy Word entered again into the vital light. And here, when God said, I will put enmity, the seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpent's head, then the holy voice of God went forth out of JEHOVAH, (which would once more move itself in time, and manifest JESUS) in the woman's matrix, in the disappeared heavenly ens, and incorporated itself anew with the holy Word [therein], as into an aim [bound] of an eternal covenant. 30. And this word, which did promise, inhest and incorporate itself into the woman's seed, was that same word which did move itself in Mary's seed, and opened the name JESUS out of the centre of the deepest love in the word, and quickened the disappeared heavenly ens with the introducing of the holy living ens into the disappeared ens of Mary. 31. Understand, the heavenly chaste virginity was again revived in the name of JESUS in the seed of Mary in the motion of the incorporated Word; and this incorporated [or engrafted or in- spoken] Word stood in Eve her seed in the matrix as an aim of a certain Covenant;
2and was all along propagated in Eve's seed, from man to man in the heavenly part, as a sound or incentive of the divine holy light's-fire, wherein the name JESUS was all along propagated in an aim and Covenant, as a glimmering incentive, until the time of the awakening [or manifestation] of it in Mary, where the Covenant was fulfilled, and the doors of the shut chamber were again opened. And this is that holy fire out of which the name JESUS was manifest, which holy fire did burn in the Jewish offerings, which appeased [or atoned] the anger of God, and bruised the head of the monstrous Serpent in man, viz. the monstrous fire-spirit, and will. 32. The bruising of the head is nothing else but to destroy the abomination of the Serpent, to take away its power by a right desire of faith; and by such a strong importunate imagination of faith on the promised Word, to take the same Word and introduce it into the Serpent's ens, and therewith destroy and ruin the devil's theft-fort; and thereby kill the matrix of the whorish desire, and introduce the matrix with its desire into the virgin-like ens, into the aim of the Covenant. 33. In which Covenant the woman and the man [female and male property] shall and must die; and the chaste virgin must be born out of the death in the Word of the Covenant, with both tinctures of peculiar love; and then the Serpent, in its desire in the anger of God, will sting on the heel the virgin-child of the new-birth in the faith.
334. For all this lifetime the virgin-like child is fast bound by the heel with a strong chain unto the monstrous image; and is not able to get quite rid of the Serpent's chain all this lifetime. This chain is the brutal bestial monstrous man, in whom lieth the monster of the whore and Serpent; a figure whereofwe have in the Revelation of John, where the woman stands, with the crown and twelve stars, upon the moon. 35. The moon signifies the bestial man, and the woman signifies the virgin-like matrix in the aim of the Covenant, out of which the virgin-child is born. 36. When as Adam was man and woman, and yet none of them both, the virginity according to the light's tincture in the holy ens was poisoned and infected in him by false desire, for the fiery property of the soul carried [or directed] its lust into the earthliness; and out of that virginity the woman, by the adjoining of all the three Principles, was made; and the woman made herself monstrous by the Serpent, and corrupted the virgin-like matrix, and by her lust did introduce a bestial monstrous serpentine [matrix] thereinto, infected with the devil's will and desire.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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